Hyderabad: Telangana on Saturday decided to postpone the remainder of the SSC public exams across the state which were due to commence from June 8.
The Telangana High Court had earlier in the day said okay for the exams to be conducted from Monday at all places except within the limits of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Ranga Reddy districts as the coronavirus epidemic is rampant there.
Chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, however, decided to postpone the whole affair because there would be great confusion if the exams were not conducted simultaneously across the state.
Education minister Sabitha Indra Reddy told Deccan Chronicle that the chief minister thought it best to postpone the exams for now and conduct them for the whole state at a later date when the Covid-19 situation in the GHMC area improved.
Sources in the Chief Minister’s Office said Chandrashekar Rao is likely to hold the review meeting with officials of the education department on Sunday to take a final call on the SSC examinations.
The High Court earlier in the day heard petitions seeking postponement of the SSC exams. On the other hand, the state government had also fled an affidavit to let it to complete the exams that had begun just when the coronavirus lockdown was imposed back in March.
The court was not inclined to allow holding the exams in the GHMC limits at this juncture. A division bench--comprising chief justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy--pointed out that a bare perusal of the data regarding the increase in Covid-19 cases clearly reveals that while Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Ranga Reddy were the hottest of hotspots, the prevalence of the disease in other parts of Telangana was either moderate or non-existent.
The court said students in the GHMC limits, Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Ranga Reddy districts should be permitted to take supplementary examinations later this year.
The students taking supplementary exams would be treated as regular students.
The court observed, “the state is required to review the situation and if need be, postpone the examinations in other areas in the state which may suddenly emerge as hotspots.”
The next hearing has been adjourned to June 19.
The bench noted, “Although the AG has pleaded that setting of question papers would be difficult, such a plea is a rather weak grounds for holding the examinations and endangering the lives of students. After all, there is no dearth of questions from other topics and subjects which can be raised in order to test the academic acumen of a student.”
